rminating the _tiempo de paz_, which had not
since been renewed. More unsafe than ever would it have been for a
Paraguayan to set foot on the western side of the river. But Ludwig
Halberger knew that the prohibition did not extend to him; and relying
on Naraguana's proffered friendship, he now determined upon retreating
into the Chaco, and claiming the protection of the Tovas chief.

Luckily, his house was not a great way from the river's bank, and in the
dead hour of a dark night, accompanied by wife and children--taking
along also his Guano servants, with such of his household effects as
could be conveniently carried, the faithful Caspar guiding and managing
all--he was rowed across the Paraguay and up the Pilcomayo. He had been
told that at some thirty leagues from the mouth of the latter stream,
was the _tolderia_ of the Tovas Indians. And truly told; since before
sunset of the second day he succeeded in reaching it, there to be
received amicably, as he had anticipated. Not only did Naraguana give
him a warm welcome but assistance in the erection of his dwelling;
afterwards stocking his _estancia_ with horses and cattle caught on the
surrounding plains. These tamed and domesticated, with their progeny,
are what anyone would have seen in his _corrals_ in the year 1836, at
the time the action of our tale commences.

CHAPTER FOUR.

HIS NEAREST NEIGHBOURS.

The house of the hunter-naturalist was placed at some distance from the
river's bank, its site chosen with an eye to the picturesque; and no
lovelier landscape ever lay before the windows of a dwelling. From its
front ones--or, better still, the verandah outside them--the eye
commands a view alone limited by the power of vision: verdant savannas,
mottled with copses of acacia and groves of palm, with here and there
single trees of the latter standing solitary, their smooth stems and
gracefully-curving fronds cut clear as cameos against the azure sky.
Nor is it a dead level plain, as _pampas_ and prairies are erroneously
supposed always to be. Instead, its surface is varied with undulations;
not abrupt as the ordinary hill and dale scenery, but gently swelling
like the ocean's waves when these have become crestless after the
subsidence of a storm.

Looking across this champaign from Halberger's house at almost any hour
of the day, one would rarely fail to observe living creatures moving
upon it. It may be a herd of the great _guazuti_ deer, or the sm